James Zebedee

139:3.1James, the older of the two apos­tle sons of Zeb­e­dee, whom Je­sus nick­named “sons of thun­der,” was thirty years old when he be­came an apos­tle. He was mar­ried, had four chil­dren, and lived near his par­ents in the out­skirts of Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida. He was a fish­er­man, ply­ing his call­ing in com­pany with his younger brother John and in as­so­ci­a­tion with An­drew and Si­mon. James and his brother John en­joyed the ad­van­tage of hav­ing known Je­sus longer than any of the other apos­tles.

139:3.2This able apos­tle was a tem­per­a­men­tal con­tra­dic­tion; he seemed re­ally to pos­sess two na­tures, both of which were ac­tu­ated by strong feel­ings. He was par­tic­u­larly ve­he­ment when his in­dig­na­tion was once fully aroused. He had a fiery tem­per when once it was ad­e­quately pro­voked, and when the storm was over, he was al­ways wont to jus­tify and ex­cuse his anger un­der the pre­tense that it was wholly a man­i­fes­ta­tion of righ­teous in­dig­na­tion. Ex­cept for these pe­ri­odic up­heavals of wrath, James’s per­son­al­ity was much like that of An­drew. He did not have An­drew’s dis­cre­tion or in­sight into hu­man na­ture, but he was a much bet­ter pub­lic speaker. Next to Pe­ter, un­less it was Mat­thew, James was the best pub­lic or­a­tor among the twelve.

139:3.3Though James was in no sense moody, he could be quiet and tac­i­turn one day and a very good talker and sto­ry­teller the next. He usu­ally talked freely with Je­sus, but among the twelve, for days at a time he was the silent man. His one great weak­ness was these spells of un­ac­count­able si­lence.

139:3.4The out­stand­ing fea­ture of James’s per­son­al­ity was his abil­ity to see all sides of a propo­si­tion. Of all the twelve, he came the near­est to grasp­ing the real im­port and sig­nif­i­cance of Je­sus’ teach­ing. He, too, was slow at first to com­pre­hend the Mas­ter’s mean­ing, but ere they had fin­ished their train­ing, he had ac­quired a su­pe­rior con­cept of Je­sus’ mes­sage. James was able to un­der­stand a wide range of hu­man na­ture; he got along well with the ver­sa­tile An­drew, the im­petu­ous Pe­ter, and his self-con­tained brother John.

139:3.5Though James and John had their trou­bles try­ing to work to­gether, it was in­spir­ing to ob­serve how well they got along. They did not suc­ceed quite so well as An­drew and Pe­ter, but they did much bet­ter than would or­di­nar­ily be ex­pected of two broth­ers, es­pe­cially such head­strong and de­ter­mined broth­ers. But, strange as it may seem, these two sons of Zeb­e­dee were much more tol­er­ant of each other than they were of strangers. They had great af­fec­tion for one an­other; they had al­ways been happy play­mates. It was these “sons of thun­der” who wanted to call fire down from heaven to de­stroy the Samar­i­tans who pre­sumed to show dis­re­spect for their Mas­ter. But the un­timely death of James greatly mod­i­fied the ve­he­ment tem­per­a­ment of his younger brother John.

139:3.6That char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus which James most ad­mired was the Mas­ter’s sym­pa­thetic af­fec­tion. Je­sus’ un­der­stand­ing in­ter­est in the small and the great, the rich and the poor, made a great ap­peal to him.

139:3.7James Zeb­e­dee was a well-bal­anced thinker and plan­ner. Along with An­drew, he was one of the more level-headed of the apos­tolic group. He was a vig­or­ous in­di­vid­ual but was never in a hurry. He was an ex­cel­lent bal­ance wheel for Pe­ter.

139:3.8He was mod­est and un­dra­matic, a daily server, an un­pre­ten­tious worker, seek­ing no spe­cial re­ward when he once grasped some­thing of the real mean­ing of the king­dom. And even in the story about the mother of James and John, who asked that her sons be granted places on the right hand and the left hand of Je­sus, it should be re­mem­bered that it was the mother who made this re­quest. And when they sig­ni­fied that they were ready to as­sume such re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, it should be rec­og­nized that they were cog­nizant of the dan­gers ac­com­pa­ny­ing the Mas­ter’s sup­posed re­volt against the Ro­man power, and that they were also will­ing to pay the price. When Je­sus asked if they were ready to drink the cup, they replied that they were. And as con­cerns James, it was lit­er­ally true—he did drink the cup with the Mas­ter, see­ing that he was the first of the apos­tles to ex­pe­ri­ence mar­tyr­dom, be­ing early put to death with the sword by Herod Agrippa. James was thus the first of the twelve to sac­ri­fice his life upon the new bat­tle line of the king­dom. Herod Agrippa feared James above all the other apos­tles. He was in­deed of­ten quiet and silent, but he was brave and de­ter­mined when his con­vic­tions were aroused and chal­lenged.

139:3.9James lived his life to the full, and when the end came, he bore him­self with such grace and for­ti­tude that even his ac­cuser and in­former, who at­tended his trial and ex­e­cu­tion, was so touched that he rushed away from the scene of James’s death to join him­self to the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus.

• James Zebedee

141:7.13James was as­ton­ished at how Je­sus seemed to see the end from the be­gin­ning. The Mas­ter rarely ap­peared to be sur­prised. He was never ex­cited, vexed, or dis­con­certed. He never apol­o­gized to any man. He was at times sad­dened, but never dis­cour­aged.

• James Zebedee

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

• James Zebedee

144:1.7Dur­ing these Sep­tem­ber weeks they rested, vis­ited, re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences since Je­sus first called them to ser­vice, and en­gaged in an earnest ef­fort to co-or­di­nate what the Mas­ter had so far taught them. In a mea­sure they all sensed that this would be their last op­por­tu­nity for pro­longed rest. They re­al­ized that their next pub­lic ef­fort in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee would mark the be­gin­ning of the fi­nal procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom, but they had lit­tle or no set­tled idea as to what the king­dom would be when it came. John and An­drew thought the king­dom had al­ready come; Pe­ter and James be­lieved that it was yet to come; Na­than­iel and Thomas frankly con­fessed they were puz­zled; Mat­thew, Philip, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were un­cer­tain and con­fused; the twins were bliss­fully ig­no­rant of the con­tro­versy; and Ju­das Is­car­iot was silent, non­com­mit­tal.

• James Zebedee

167:0.3Je­sus and the ten apos­tles ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia on Wednes­day, Febru­ary 22, and spent Thurs­day and Fri­day rest­ing from their re­cent trav­els and labors. That Fri­day night James spoke in the syn­a­gogue, and a gen­eral coun­cil was called for the fol­low­ing evening. They were much re­joiced over the prog­ress of the gospel at Phil­a­del­phia and among the near-by vil­lages. The mes­sen­gers of David also brought word of the fur­ther ad­vance­ment of the king­dom through­out Pales­tine, as well as good news from Alexan­dria and Da­mas­cus.

• James Zebedee

167:4.4Ac­cord­ingly, early on Wednes­day morn­ing he said to his apos­tles: “Let us pre­pare at once to go into Judea again.” And when the apos­tles heard their Mas­ter say this, they drew off by them­selves for a time to take coun­sel of one an­other. James as­sumed the di­rec­tion of the con­fer­ence, and they all agreed that it was only folly to al­low Je­sus to go again into Judea, and they came back as one man and so in­formed him. Said James: “Mas­ter, you were in Je­ru­sa­lem a few weeks back, and the lead­ers sought your death, while the peo­ple were minded to stone you. At that time you gave these men their chance to re­ceive the truth, and we will not per­mit you to go again into Judea.”

• James Zebedee

174:1.1For sev­eral days Pe­ter and James had been en­gaged in dis­cussing their dif­fer­ences of opin­ion about the Mas­ter’s teach­ing re­gard­ing the for­give­ness of sin. They had both agreed to lay the mat­ter be­fore Je­sus, and Pe­ter em­braced this oc­ca­sion as a fit­ting op­por­tu­nity for se­cur­ing the Mas­ter’s coun­sel. Ac­cord­ingly, Si­mon Pe­ter broke in on the con­ver­sa­tion deal­ing with the dif­fer­ences be­tween praise and wor­ship, by ask­ing: “Mas­ter, James and I are not in ac­cord re­gard­ing your teach­ings hav­ing to do with the for­give­ness of sin. James claims you teach that the Fa­ther for­gives us even be­fore we ask him, and I main­tain that re­pen­tance and con­fes­sion must pre­cede the for­give­ness. Which of us is right? what do you say?”

• James Zebedee

191:0.5James Zeb­e­dee at first ad­vo­cated that they all go to the tomb; he was strongly in fa­vor of do­ing some­thing to get to the bot­tom of the mys­tery. It was Na­than­iel who pre­vented them from go­ing out in pub­lic in re­sponse to James’s urg­ing, and he did this by re­mind­ing them of Je­sus’ warn­ing against un­duly jeop­ar­diz­ing their lives at this time. By noon­time James had set­tled down with the oth­ers to watch­ful wait­ing. He said lit­tle; he was tremen­dously dis­ap­pointed be­cause Je­sus did not ap­pear to them, and he did not know of the Mas­ter’s many ap­pear­ances to other groups and in­di­vid­u­als.

194:1.2It was about two o’clock when Pe­ter stood up in that very place where his Mas­ter had last taught in this tem­ple, and de­liv­ered that im­pas­sioned ap­peal which re­sulted in the win­ning of more than two thou­sand souls. The Mas­ter had gone, but they sud­denly dis­cov­ered that this story about him had great power with the peo­ple. No won­der they were led on into the fur­ther procla­ma­tion of that which vin­di­cated their for­mer de­vo­tion to Je­sus and at the same time so con­strained men to be­lieve in him. Six of the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in this meet­ing: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew. They talked for more than an hour and a half and de­liv­ered mes­sages in Greek, He­brew, and Ara­maic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which they had a speak­ing ac­quain­tance.

182:3.1Af­ter all was still and quiet about the camp, Je­sus, tak­ing Pe­ter, James, and John, went a short way up a near-by ravine where he had of­ten be­fore gone to pray and com­mune. The three apos­tles could not help rec­og­niz­ing that he was griev­ously op­pressed; never be­fore had they ob­served their Mas­ter to be so heavy-laden and sor­row­ful. When they ar­rived at the place of his de­vo­tions, he bade the three sit down and watch with him while he went off about a stone’s throw to pray. And when he had fallen down on his face, he prayed: “My Fa­ther, I came into this world to do your will, and so have I. I know that the hour has come to lay down this life in the flesh, and I do not shrink there­from, but I would know that it is your will that I drink this cup. Send me the as­sur­ance that I will please you in my death even as I have in my life.”

182:3.2The Mas­ter re­mained in a prayer­ful at­ti­tude for a few mo­ments, and then, go­ing over to the three apos­tles, he found them sound asleep, for their eyes were heavy and they could not re­main awake. As Je­sus awoke them, he said: “What! can you not watch with me even for one hour? Can­not you see that my soul is ex­ceed­ingly sor­row­ful, even to death, and that I crave your com­pan­ion­ship?” Af­ter the three had aroused from their slum­ber, the Mas­ter again went apart by him­self and, falling down on the ground, again prayed: “Fa­ther, I know it is pos­si­ble to avoid this cup—all things are pos­si­ble with you—but I have come to do your will, and while this is a bit­ter cup, I would drink it if it is your will.” And when he had thus prayed, a mighty an­gel came down by his side and, speak­ing to him, touched him and strength­ened him.

182:3.3When Je­sus re­turned to speak with the three apos­tles, he again found them fast asleep. He awak­ened them, say­ing: “In such an hour I need that you should watch and pray with me—all the more do you need to pray that you en­ter not into temp­ta­tion—where­fore do you fall asleep when I leave you?”

182:3.4And then, for a third time, the Mas­ter with­drew and prayed: “Fa­ther, you see my sleep­ing apos­tles; have mercy upon them. The spirit is in­deed will­ing, but the flesh is weak. And now, O Fa­ther, if this cup may not pass, then would I drink it. Not my will, but yours, be done.” And when he had fin­ished pray­ing, he lay for a mo­ment pros­trate on the ground. When he arose and went back to his apos­tles, once more he found them asleep. He sur­veyed them and, with a pity­ing ges­ture, ten­derly said: “Sleep on now and take your rest; the time of de­ci­sion is past. The hour is now upon us wherein the Son of Man will be be­trayed into the hands of his en­e­mies.” As he reached down to shake them that he might awaken them, he said: “Arise, let us be go­ing back to the camp, for, be­hold, he who be­trays me is at hand, and the hour has come when my flock shall be scat­tered. But I have al­ready told you about these things.”

191:2.1Shortly af­ter nine o’clock that evening, af­ter the de­par­ture of Cleopas and Ja­cob, while the Al­pheus twins com­forted Pe­ter, and while Na­than­iel re­mon­strated with An­drew, and as the ten apos­tles were there as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber with all the doors bolted for fear of ar­rest, the Mas­ter, in mor­ontia form, sud­denly ap­peared in the midst of them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Why are you so fright­ened when I ap­pear, as though you had seen a spirit? Did I not tell you about these things when I was pres­ent with you in the flesh? Did I not say to you that the chief priests and the rulers would de­liver me up to be killed, that one of your own num­ber would be­tray me, and that on the third day I would rise? Where­fore all your doubt­ings and all this dis­cus­sion about the re­ports of the women, Cleopas and Ja­cob, and even Pe­ter? How long will you doubt my words and refuse to be­lieve my promises? And now that you ac­tu­ally see me, will you be­lieve? Even now one of you is ab­sent. When you are gath­ered to­gether once more, and af­ter all of you know of a cer­tainty that the Son of Man has risen from the grave, go hence into Gal­i­lee. Have faith in God; have faith in one an­other; and so shall you en­ter into the new ser­vice of the king­dom of heaven. I will tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem with you un­til you are ready to go into Gal­i­lee. My peace I leave with you.”

191:2.2When the mor­ontia Je­sus had spo­ken to them, he van­ished in an in­stant from their sight. And they all fell on their faces, prais­ing God and ven­er­at­ing their van­ished Mas­ter. This was the Mas­ter’s ninth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance.

191:5.1Thomas spent a lone­some week alone with him­self in the hills around about Oli­vet. Dur­ing this time he saw only those at Si­mon’s house and John Mark. It was about nine o’clock on Sat­ur­day, April 15, when the two apos­tles found him and took him back with them to their ren­dezvous at the Mark home. The next day Thomas lis­tened to the telling of the sto­ries of the Mas­ter’s var­i­ous ap­pear­ances, but he stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve. He main­tained that Pe­ter had en­thused them into think­ing they had seen the Mas­ter. Na­than­iel rea­soned with him, but it did no good. There was an emo­tional stub­born­ness as­so­ci­ated with his cus­tom­ary doubt­ful­ness, and this state of mind, cou­pled with his cha­grin at hav­ing run away from them, con­spired to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of iso­la­tion which even Thomas him­self did not fully un­der­stand. He had with­drawn from his fel­lows, he had gone his own way, and now, even when he was back among them, he un­con­sciously tended to as­sume an at­ti­tude of dis­agree­ment. He was slow to sur­ren­der; he dis­liked to give in. With­out in­tend­ing it, he re­ally en­joyed the at­ten­tion paid him; he de­rived un­con­scious sat­is­fac­tion from the ef­forts of all his fel­lows to con­vince and con­vert him. He had missed them for a full week, and he ob­tained con­sid­er­able plea­sure from their per­sis­tent at­ten­tions.

191:5.2They were hav­ing their evening meal a lit­tle af­ter six o’clock, with Pe­ter sit­ting on one side of Thomas and Na­than­iel on the other, when the doubt­ing apos­tle said: “I will not be­lieve un­less I see the Mas­ter with my own eyes and put my fin­ger in the mark of the nails.” As they thus sat at sup­per, and while the doors were se­curely shut and barred, the mor­ontia Mas­ter sud­denly ap­peared in­side the cur­va­ture of the ta­ble and, stand­ing di­rectly in front of Thomas, said:

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

191:5.4When the Mas­ter had so spo­ken, he looked down into the face of Thomas and said: “And you, Thomas, who said you would not be­lieve un­less you could see me and put your fin­ger in the nail marks of my hands, have now be­held me and heard my words; and though you see no nail marks on my hands, since I am raised in the form that you also shall have when you de­part from this world, what will you say to your breth­ren? You will ac­knowl­edge the truth, for al­ready in your heart you had be­gun to be­lieve even when you so stoutly as­serted your un­be­lief. Your doubts, Thomas, al­ways most stub­bornly as­sert them­selves just as they are about to crum­ble. Thomas, I bid you be not faith­less but be­liev­ing—and I know you will be­lieve, even with a whole heart.”

191:5.5When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees be­fore the mor­ontia Mas­ter and ex­claimed, “I be­lieve! My Lord and my Mas­ter!” Then said Je­sus to Thomas: “You have be­lieved, Thomas, be­cause you have re­ally seen and heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will be­lieve even though they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mor­tal ear.”

191:5.6And then, as the Mas­ter’s form moved over near the head of the ta­ble, he ad­dressed them all, say­ing: “And now go all of you to Gal­i­lee, where I will pres­ently ap­pear to you.” Af­ter he said this, he van­ished from their sight.

191:5.7The eleven apos­tles were now fully con­vinced that Je­sus had risen from the dead, and very early the next morn­ing, be­fore the break of day, they started out for Gal­i­lee.

192:1.1About six o’clock Fri­day morn­ing, April 21, the mor­ontia Mas­ter made his thir­teenth ap­pear­ance, the first in Gal­i­lee, to the ten apos­tles as their boat drew near the shore close to the usual land­ing place at Beth­saida.

192:1.2Af­ter the apos­tles had spent the af­ter­noon and early evening of Thurs­day in wait­ing at the Zeb­e­dee home, Si­mon Pe­ter sug­gested that they go fish­ing. When Pe­ter pro­posed the fish­ing trip, all of the apos­tles de­cided to go along. All night they toiled with the nets but caught no fish. They did not much mind the fail­ure to make a catch, for they had many in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to talk over, things which had so re­cently hap­pened to them at Je­ru­sa­lem. But when day­light came, they de­cided to re­turn to Beth­saida. As they neared the shore, they saw some­one on the beach, near the boat land­ing, stand­ing by a fire. At first they thought it was John Mark, who had come down to wel­come them back with their catch, but as they drew nearer the shore, they saw they were mis­taken—the man was too tall for John. It had oc­curred to none of them that the per­son on the shore was the Mas­ter. They did not al­to­gether un­der­stand why Je­sus wanted to meet with them amidst the scenes of their ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tions and out in the open in con­tact with na­ture, far away from the shut-in en­vi­ron­ment of Je­ru­sa­lem with its tragic as­so­ci­a­tions of fear, be­trayal, and death. He had told them that, if they would go into Gal­i­lee, he would meet them there, and he was about to ful­fill that prom­ise.

192:1.3As they dropped an­chor and pre­pared to en­ter the small boat for go­ing ashore, the man on the beach called to them, “Lads, have you caught any­thing?” And when they an­swered, “No,” he spoke again. “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find fish.” While they did not know it was Je­sus who had di­rected them, with one ac­cord they cast in the net as they had been in­structed, and im­me­di­ately it was filled, so much so that they were hardly able to draw it up. Now, John Zeb­e­dee was quick of per­cep­tion, and when he saw the heavy-laden net, he per­ceived that it was the Mas­ter who had spo­ken to them. When this thought came into his mind, he leaned over and whis­pered to Pe­ter, “It is the Mas­ter.” Pe­ter was ever a man of thought­less ac­tion and im­petu­ous de­vo­tion; so when John whis­pered this in his ear, he quickly arose and cast him­self into the wa­ter that he might the sooner reach the Mas­ter’s side. His breth­ren came up close be­hind him, hav­ing come ashore in the small boat, haul­ing the net of fishes af­ter them.

192:1.4By this time John Mark was up and, see­ing the apos­tles com­ing ashore with the heavy-laden net, ran down the beach to greet them; and when he saw eleven men in­stead of ten, he sur­mised that the un­rec­og­nized one was the risen Je­sus, and as the as­ton­ished ten stood by in si­lence, the youth rushed up to the Mas­ter and, kneel­ing at his feet, said, “My Lord and my Mas­ter.” And then Je­sus spoke, not as he had in Je­ru­sa­lem, when he greeted them with “Peace be upon you,” but in com­mon­place tones he ad­dressed John Mark: “Well, John, I am glad to see you again and in care­free Gal­i­lee, where we can have a good visit. Stay with us, John, and have break­fast.”

192:1.5As Je­sus talked with the young man, the ten were so as­ton­ished and sur­prised that they ne­glected to haul the net of fish in upon the beach. Now spoke Je­sus: “Bring in your fish and pre­pare some for break­fast. Al­ready we have the fire and much bread.”

192:1.6While John Mark had paid homage to the Mas­ter, Pe­ter had for a mo­ment been shocked at the sight of the coals of fire glow­ing there on the beach; the scene re­minded him so vividly of the mid­night fire of char­coal in the court­yard of An­nas, where he had dis­owned the Mas­ter, but he shook him­self and, kneel­ing at the Mas­ter’s feet, ex­claimed, “My Lord and my Mas­ter!”

192:1.7Pe­ter then joined his com­rades as they hauled in the net. When they had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones. And again was the mis­take made of call­ing this an­other mirac­u­lous catch of fish. There was no mir­a­cle con­nected with this episode. It was merely an ex­er­cise of the Mas­ter’s pre­knowl­edge. He knew the fish were there and ac­cord­ingly di­rected the apos­tles where to cast the net.

192:1.8Je­sus spoke to them, say­ing: “Come now, all of you, to break­fast. Even the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the fish.” John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Mas­ter put on the fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Je­sus broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hun­gry apos­tles. When they had all been served, Je­sus bade John Mark sit down while he him­self served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Je­sus vis­ited with them and re­counted their many ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee and by this very lake.

192:1.9This was the third time Je­sus had man­i­fested him­self to the apos­tles as a group. When Je­sus first ad­dressed them, ask­ing if they had any fish, they did not sus­pect who he was be­cause it was a com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence for these fish­er­men on the Sea of Gal­i­lee, when they came ashore, to be thus ac­costed by the fish mer­chants of Ta­ri­chea, who were usu­ally on hand to buy the fresh catches for the dry­ing es­tab­lish­ments.

192:1.10Je­sus vis­ited with the ten apos­tles and John Mark for more than an hour, and then he walked up and down the beach, talk­ing with them two and two—but not the same cou­ples he had at first sent out to­gether to teach. All eleven of the apos­tles had come down from Je­ru­sa­lem to­gether, but Si­mon Ze­lo­tes grew more and more de­spon­dent as they drew near Gal­i­lee, so that, when they reached Beth­saida, he for­sook his breth­ren and re­turned to his home.

192:1.11Be­fore tak­ing leave of them this morn­ing, Je­sus di­rected that two of the apos­tles should vol­un­teer to go to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and bring him back that very day. And Pe­ter and An­drew did so.

192:2.1When they had fin­ished break­fast, and while the oth­ers sat by the fire, Je­sus beck­oned to Pe­ter and to John that they should come with him for a stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Je­sus said to John, “John, do you love me?” And when John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, with all my heart,” the Mas­ter said: “Then, John, give up your in­tol­er­ance and learn to love men as I have loved you. De­vote your life to prov­ing that love is the great­est thing in the world. It is the love of God that im­pels men to seek sal­va­tion. Love is the an­ces­tor of all spir­i­tual good­ness, the essence of the true and the beau­ti­ful.”

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

192:2.3Af­ter they had walked along a lit­tle far­ther, the Mas­ter turned to Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you re­ally love me?” And then said Si­mon, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And again said Je­sus: “Then take good care of my sheep. Be a good and a true shep­herd to the flock. Be­tray not their con­fi­dence in you. Be not taken by sur­prise at the en­emy’s hand. Be on guard at all times—watch and pray.”

192:2.4When they had gone a few steps far­ther, Je­sus turned to Pe­ter and, for the third time, asked, “Pe­ter, do you truly love me?” And then Pe­ter, be­ing slightly grieved at the Mas­ter’s seem­ing dis­trust of him, said with con­sid­er­able feel­ing, “Lord, you know all things, and there­fore do you know that I re­ally and truly love you.” Then said Je­sus: “Feed my sheep. Do not for­sake the flock. Be an ex­am­ple and an in­spi­ra­tion to all your fel­low shep­herds. Love the flock as I have loved you and de­vote your­self to their wel­fare even as I have de­voted my life to your wel­fare. And fol­low af­ter me even to the end.”

192:2.5Pe­ter took this last state­ment lit­er­ally—that he should con­tinue to fol­low af­ter him—and turn­ing to Je­sus, he pointed to John, ask­ing, “If I fol­low on af­ter you, what shall this man do?” And then, per­ceiv­ing that Pe­ter had mis­un­der­stood his words, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, be not con­cerned about what your breth­ren shall do. If I will that John should tarry af­ter you are gone, even un­til I come back, what is that to you? Only make sure that you fol­low me.”

192:2.6This re­mark spread among the breth­ren and was re­ceived as a state­ment by Je­sus to the ef­fect that John would not die be­fore the Mas­ter re­turned, as many thought and hoped, to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory. It was this in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Je­sus said that had much to do with get­ting Si­mon Ze­lo­tes back into ser­vice, and keep­ing him at work.

192:2.7When they re­turned to the oth­ers, Je­sus went for a walk and talk with An­drew and James. When they had gone a short dis­tance, Je­sus said to An­drew, “An­drew, do you trust me?” And when the for­mer chief of the apos­tles heard Je­sus ask such a ques­tion, he stood still and an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, of a cer­tainty I trust you, and you know that I do.” Then said Je­sus: “An­drew, if you trust me, trust your breth­ren more—even Pe­ter. I once trusted you with the lead­er­ship of your breth­ren. Now must you trust oth­ers as I leave you to go to the Fa­ther. When your breth­ren be­gin to scat­ter abroad be­cause of bit­ter per­se­cu­tions, be a con­sid­er­ate and wise coun­selor to James my brother in the flesh when they put heavy bur­dens upon him which he is not qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to bear. And then go on trust­ing, for I will not fail you. When you are through on earth, you shall come to me.”

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”

192:2.9Je­sus next talked with Thomas and Na­than­iel. Said he to Thomas, “Thomas, do you serve me?” Thomas replied, “Yes, Lord, I serve you now and al­ways.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would serve me, serve my breth­ren in the flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-do­ing but per­se­vere as one who has been or­dained by God for this ser­vice of love. When you have fin­ished your ser­vice with me on earth, you shall serve with me in glory. Thomas, you must cease doubt­ing; you must grow in faith and the knowl­edge of truth. Be­lieve in God like a child but cease to act so child­ishly. Have cour­age; be strong in faith and mighty in the king­dom of God.”

192:2.10Then said the Mas­ter to Na­than­iel, “Na­than­iel, do you serve me?” And the apos­tle an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, and with an un­di­vided af­fec­tion.” Then said Je­sus: “If, there­fore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that you are de­voted to the wel­fare of my breth­ren on earth with tire­less af­fec­tion. Ad­mix friend­ship with your coun­sel and add love to your phi­los­o­phy. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you. Be faith­ful to men as I have watched over you. Be less crit­i­cal; ex­pect less of some men and thereby lessen the ex­tent of your dis­ap­point­ment. And when the work down here is over, you shall serve with me on high.”

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

192:2.12And then, speak­ing to Mat­thew, the Mas­ter asked, “Mat­thew, do you have it in your heart to obey me?” Mat­thew an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I am fully ded­i­cated to do­ing your will.” Then said the Mas­ter: “Mat­thew, if you would obey me, go forth to teach all peo­ples this gospel of the king­dom. No longer will you serve your breth­ren the ma­te­rial things of life; hence­forth you are also to pro­claim the good news of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion. From now on have an eye sin­gle only to obey­ing your com­mis­sion to preach this gospel of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. As I have done the Fa­ther’s will on earth, so shall you ful­fill the di­vine com­mis­sion. Re­mem­ber, both Jew and gen­tile are your breth­ren. Fear no man when you pro­claim the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And where I go, you shall pres­ently come.”

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

192:2.14It was al­most ten o’clock when Je­sus re­turned from his visit with the Al­pheus twins, and as he left the apos­tles, he said: “Farewell, un­til I meet you all on the mount of your or­di­na­tion to­mor­row at noon­time.” When he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.1At noon on Sat­ur­day, April 22, the eleven apos­tles as­sem­bled by ap­point­ment on the hill near Ca­per­naum, and Je­sus ap­peared among them. This meet­ing oc­curred on the very mount where the Mas­ter had set them apart as his apos­tles and as am­bas­sadors of the Fa­ther’s king­dom on earth. And this was the Mas­ter’s four­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion.

192:3.2At this time the eleven apos­tles knelt in a cir­cle about the Mas­ter and heard him re­peat the charges and saw him re-en­act the or­di­na­tion scene even as when they were first set apart for the spe­cial work of the king­dom. And all of this was to them as a mem­ory of their for­mer con­se­cra­tion to the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, ex­cept the Mas­ter’s prayer. When the Mas­ter—the mor­ontia Je­sus—now prayed, it was in tones of majesty and with words of power such as the apos­tles had never be­fore heard. Their Mas­ter now spoke with the rulers of the uni­verses as one who, in his own uni­verse, had had all power and au­thor­ity com­mit­ted to his hand. And these eleven men never for­got this ex­pe­ri­ence of the mor­ontia reded­i­ca­tion to the for­mer pledges of am­bas­sador­ship. The Mas­ter spent just one hour on this mount with his am­bas­sadors, and when he had taken an af­fec­tion­ate farewell of them, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.3And no one saw Je­sus for a full week. The apos­tles re­ally had no idea what to do, not know­ing whether the Mas­ter had gone to the Fa­ther. In this state of un­cer­tainty they tar­ried at Beth­saida. They were afraid to go fish­ing lest he come to visit them and they miss see­ing him. Dur­ing this en­tire week Je­sus was oc­cu­pied with the mor­ontia crea­tures on earth and with the af­fairs of the mor­ontia tran­si­tion which he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing on this world.

192:4.1Word of the ap­pear­ances of Je­sus was spread­ing through­out Gal­i­lee, and ev­ery day in­creas­ing num­bers of be­liev­ers ar­rived at the Zeb­e­dee home to in­quire about the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion and to find out the truth about these re­puted ap­pear­ances. Pe­ter, early in the week, sent out word that a pub­lic meet­ing would be held by the sea­side the next Sab­bath at three o’clock in the af­ter­noon.

192:4.2Ac­cord­ingly, on Sat­ur­day, April 29, at three o’clock, more than five hun­dred be­liev­ers from the en­vi­rons of Ca­per­naum as­sem­bled at Beth­saida to hear Pe­ter preach his first pub­lic ser­mon since the res­ur­rec­tion. The apos­tle was at his best, and af­ter he had fin­ished his ap­peal­ing dis­course, few of his hear­ers doubted that the Mas­ter had risen from the dead.

192:4.3Pe­ter ended his ser­mon, say­ing: “We af­firm that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth is not dead; we de­clare that he has risen from the tomb; we pro­claim that we have seen him and talked with him.” Just as he fin­ished mak­ing this dec­la­ra­tion of faith, there by his side, in full view of all these peo­ple, the Mas­ter ap­peared in mor­ontia form and, speak­ing to them in fa­mil­iar ac­cents, said, “Peace be upon you, and my peace I leave with you.” When he had thus ap­peared and had so spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. This was the fif­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of the risen Je­sus.

192:4.4Be­cause of cer­tain things said to the eleven while they were in con­fer­ence with the Mas­ter on the mount of or­di­na­tion, the apos­tles re­ceived the im­pres­sion that their Mas­ter would pres­ently make a pub­lic ap­pear­ance be­fore a group of the Galilean be­liev­ers, and that, af­ter he had done so, they were to re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, early the next day, Sun­day, April 30, the eleven left Beth­saida for Je­ru­sa­lem. They did con­sid­er­able teach­ing and preach­ing on the way down the Jor­dan, so that they did not ar­rive at the home of the Marks in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til late on Wednes­day, May 3.

192:4.5This was a sad home-com­ing for John Mark. Just a few hours be­fore he reached home, his fa­ther, Eli­jah Mark, sud­denly died from a hem­or­rhage in the brain. Al­though the thought of the cer­tainty of the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead did much to com­fort the apos­tles in their grief, at the same time they truly mourned the loss of their good friend, who had been their stanch sup­porter even in the times of great trou­ble and dis­ap­point­ment. John Mark did all he could to com­fort his mother and, speak­ing for her, in­vited the apos­tles to con­tinue to make their home at her house. And the eleven made this up­per cham­ber their head­quar­ters un­til af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost.

192:4.6The apos­tles had pur­posely en­tered Je­ru­sa­lem af­ter night­fall that they might not be seen by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. Nei­ther did they pub­licly ap­pear in con­nec­tion with the fu­neral of Eli­jah Mark. All the next day they re­mained in quiet seclu­sion in this event­ful up­per cham­ber.

192:4.7On Thurs­day night the apos­tles had a won­der­ful meet­ing in this up­per cham­ber and all pledged them­selves to go forth in the pub­lic preach­ing of the new gospel of the risen Lord ex­cept Thomas, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and the Al­pheus twins. Al­ready had be­gun the first steps of chang­ing the gospel of the king­dom—son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man—into the procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. Na­than­iel op­posed this shift in the bur­den of their pub­lic mes­sage, but he could not with­stand Pe­ter’s elo­quence, nei­ther could he over­come the en­thu­si­asm of the dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cially the women be­liev­ers.

192:4.8And so, un­der the vig­or­ous lead­er­ship of Pe­ter and ere the Mas­ter as­cended to the Fa­ther, his well-mean­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­gan that sub­tle pro­cess of grad­u­ally and cer­tainly chang­ing the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a new and mod­i­fied form of re­li­gion about Je­sus.

193:0.1The six­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus oc­curred on Fri­day, May 5, in the court­yard of Nicode­mus, about nine o’clock at night. On this evening the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers had made their first at­tempt to get to­gether since the res­ur­rec­tion. As­sem­bled here at this time were the eleven apos­tles, the women’s corps and their as­so­ciates, and about fifty other lead­ing dis­ci­ples of the Mas­ter, in­clud­ing a num­ber of the Greeks. This com­pany of be­liev­ers had been vis­it­ing in­for­mally for more than half an hour when, sud­denly, the mor­ontia Mas­ter ap­peared in full view and im­me­di­ately be­gan to in­struct them. Said Je­sus:

193:0.2“Peace be upon you. This is the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive group of be­liev­ers—apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, both men and women—to which I have ap­peared since the time of my de­liv­er­ance from the flesh. I now call you to wit­ness that I told you be­fore­hand that my so­journ among you must come to an end; I told you that pres­ently I must re­turn to the Fa­ther. And then I plainly told you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews would de­liver me up to be put to death, and that I would rise from the grave. Why, then, did you al­low your­selves to be­come so dis­con­certed by all this when it came to pass? and why were you so sur­prised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed to be­lieve me be­cause you heard my words with­out com­pre­hend­ing the mean­ing thereof.

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

193:0.6When the Mas­ter had spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. It was near day­break be­fore these be­liev­ers dis­persed; all night they re­mained to­gether, earnestly dis­cussing the Mas­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tions and con­tem­plat­ing all that had be­fallen them. James Zeb­e­dee and oth­ers of the apos­tles also told them of their ex­pe­ri­ences with the mor­ontia Mas­ter in Gal­i­lee and re­cited how he had three times ap­peared to them.

193:3.1Early Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, Je­sus made his last ap­pear­ance on earth as a mor­ontia per­son­al­ity. As the eleven apos­tles were about to sit down to break­fast in the up­per cham­ber of Mary Mark’s home, Je­sus ap­peared to them and said:

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:3.3When he had spo­ken, he beck­oned for them to come with him, and he led them out on the Mount of Olives, where he bade them farewell prepara­tory to de­part­ing from Uran­tia. This was a solemn jour­ney to Oli­vet. Not a word was spo­ken by any of them from the time they left the up­per cham­ber un­til Je­sus paused with them on the Mount of Olives.

193:5.1It was al­most half past seven o’clock this Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, when Je­sus ar­rived on the west­ern slope of Mount Oli­vet with his eleven silent and some­what be­wil­dered apos­tles. From this lo­ca­tion, about two thirds the way up the moun­tain, they could look out over Je­ru­sa­lem and down upon Geth­sem­ane. Je­sus now pre­pared to say his last farewell to the apos­tles be­fore he took leave of Uran­tia. As he stood there be­fore them, with­out be­ing di­rected they knelt about him in a cir­cle, and the Mas­ter said:

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

193:5.3When the mor­ontia Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight. This so-called as­cen­sion of Je­sus was in no way dif­fer­ent from his other dis­ap­pear­ances from mor­tal vi­sion dur­ing the forty days of his mor­ontia ca­reer on Uran­tia.

193:5.4The Mas­ter went to Eden­tia by way of Je­ru­sem, where the Most Highs, un­der the ob­ser­va­tion of the Par­a­dise Son, re­leased Je­sus of Naz­a­reth from the mor­ontia state and, through the spirit chan­nels of as­cen­sion, re­turned him to the sta­tus of Par­a­dise son­ship and su­preme sov­er­eignty on Sal­ving­ton.

193:5.5It was about seven forty-five this morn­ing when the mor­ontia Je­sus dis­ap­peared from the ob­ser­va­tion of his eleven apos­tles to be­gin the as­cent to the right hand of his Fa­ther, there to re­ceive for­mal con­fir­ma­tion of his com­pleted sov­er­eignty of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

158:0.2In a gen­eral way, Je­sus knew be­fore­hand what was to tran­spire on the moun­tain, and he much de­sired that all his apos­tles might share this ex­pe­ri­ence. It was to fit them for this rev­e­la­tion of him­self that he tar­ried with them at the foot of the moun­tain. But they could not at­tain those spir­i­tual lev­els which would jus­tify their ex­po­sure to the full ex­pe­ri­ence of the vis­i­ta­tion of the ce­les­tial be­ings so soon to ap­pear on earth. And since he could not take all of his as­so­ciates with him, he de­cided to take only the three who were in the habit of ac­com­pa­ny­ing him on such spe­cial vig­ils. Ac­cord­ingly, only Pe­ter, James, and John shared even a part of this unique ex­pe­ri­ence with the Mas­ter.

158:2.5Je­sus did not take Pe­ter, James, and John with him up to the mount of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion be­cause they were in any sense bet­ter pre­pared than the other apos­tles to wit­ness what hap­pened, or be­cause they were spir­i­tu­ally more fit to en­joy such a rare priv­i­lege. Not at all. He well knew that none of the twelve were spir­i­tu­ally qual­i­fied for this ex­pe­ri­ence; there­fore did he take with him only the three apos­tles who were as­signed to ac­com­pany him at those times when he de­sired to be alone to en­joy soli­tary com­mu­nion.

• bid fire devour insolent Samaritans

139:4.8There was an­other side to John that one would not ex­pect to find in this quiet and in­tro­spec­tive type. He was some­what big­oted and in­or­di­nately in­tol­er­ant. In this re­spect he and James were much alike—they both wanted to call down fire from heaven on the heads of the dis­re­spect­ful Samar­i­tans. When John en­coun­tered some strangers teach­ing in Je­sus’ name, he promptly for­bade them. But he was not the only one of the twelve who was tainted with this kind of self-es­teem and su­pe­ri­or­ity con­scious­ness.

• opposed proclaiming Jesus king

152:2.5Philip had pro­vided a three days’ sup­ply of food for Je­sus and the twelve, which was in the cus­tody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By af­ter­noon of this, the third day for al­most half of this mul­ti­tude, the food the peo­ple had brought with them was nearly ex­hausted. David Zeb­e­dee had no tented city here to feed and ac­com­mo­date the crowds. Nei­ther had Philip made food pro­vi­sion for such a mul­ti­tude. But the peo­ple, even though they were hun­gry, would not go away. It was be­ing qui­etly whis­pered about that Je­sus, de­sir­ing to avoid trou­ble with both Herod and the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers, had cho­sen this quiet spot out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion of all his en­e­mies as the proper place to be crowned king. The en­thu­si­asm of the peo­ple was ris­ing ev­ery hour. Not a word was said to Je­sus, though, of course, he knew all that was go­ing on. Even the twelve apos­tles were still tainted with such no­tions, and es­pe­cially the younger evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles who fa­vored this at­tempt to pro­claim Je­sus king were Pe­ter, John, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Ju­das Is­car­iot. Those op­pos­ing the plan were An­drew, James, Na­than­iel, and Thomas. Mat­thew, Philip, and the Al­pheus twins were non­com­mit­tal. The ringleader of this plot to make him king was Joab, one of the young evan­ge­lists.

• bid fire devour insolent Samaritans

162:0.2Af­ter Philip and Mat­thew had re­turned to their fel­lows and re­ported how they had been driven out of the vil­lage, James and John stepped up to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, we pray you to give us per­mis­sion to bid fire come down from heaven to de­vour these in­so­lent and im­pen­i­tent Samar­i­tans.” But when Je­sus heard these words of vengeance, he turned upon the sons of Zeb­e­dee and severely re­buked them: “You know not what man­ner of at­ti­tude you man­i­fest. Vengeance sa­vors not of the out­look of the king­dom of heaven. Rather than dis­pute, let us jour­ney over to the lit­tle vil­lage by the Jor­dan ford.” Thus be­cause of sec­tar­ian prej­u­dice these Samar­i­tans de­nied them­selves the honor of show­ing hos­pi­tal­ity to the Cre­ator Son of a uni­verse.

• perplexed by entry into Jerusalem

172:5.4To James Zeb­e­dee, this Sun­day was a day of per­plex­ity and pro­found con­fu­sion; he could not grasp the pur­port of what was go­ing on; he could not com­pre­hend the Mas­ter’s pur­pose in per­mit­ting this wild ac­claim and then in re­fus­ing to say a word to the peo­ple when they ar­rived at the tem­ple. As the pro­ces­sion moved down Oli­vet to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem, more es­pe­cially when they were met by the thou­sands of pil­grims who poured forth to wel­come the Mas­ter, James was cru­elly torn by his con­flict­ing emo­tions of ela­tion and grat­i­fi­ca­tion at what he saw and by his pro­found feel­ing of fear as to what would hap­pen when they reached the tem­ple. And then was he down­cast and over­come by dis­ap­point­ment when Je­sus climbed off the don­key and pro­ceeded to walk leisurely about the tem­ple courts. James could not un­der­stand the rea­son for throw­ing away such a mag­nif­i­cent op­por­tu­nity to pro­claim the king­dom. By night, his mind was held firmly in the grip of a dis­tress­ing and dread­ful un­cer­tainty.

• bid fire devour insolent Samaritans
• son of thunder

181:2.4“Once we called you and your brother sons of thun­der. You started out with us strong-minded and in­tol­er­ant, but you have changed much since you wanted me to call fire down upon the heads of ig­no­rant and thought­less un­be­liev­ers. And you must change yet more. You should be­come the apos­tle of the new com­mand­ment which I have this night given you. Ded­i­cate your life to teach­ing your breth­ren how to love one an­other, even as I have loved you.”

135:8.1By De­cem­ber of A.D. 25, when John reached the neigh­bor­hood of Pella in his jour­ney up the Jor­dan, his fame had ex­tended through­out all Pales­tine, and his work had be­come the chief topic of con­ver­sa­tion in all the towns about the lake of Gal­i­lee. Je­sus had spo­ken fa­vor­ably of John’s mes­sage, and this had caused many from Ca­per­naum to join John’s cult of re­pen­tance and bap­tism. James and John the fish­er­men sons of Zeb­e­dee had gone down in De­cem­ber, soon af­ter John took up his preach­ing po­si­tion near Pella, and had of­fered them­selves for bap­tism. They went to see John once a week and brought back to Je­sus fresh, first­hand re­ports of the evan­ge­list’s work.

137:1.5Af­ter Je­sus had re­turned to Pella for the night, and while An­drew and Si­mon were yet dis­cussing the na­ture of their ser­vice in the es­tab­lish­ment of the forth­com­ing king­dom, James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee ar­rived upon the scene, hav­ing just re­turned from their long and fu­tile search­ing in the hills for Je­sus. When they heard Si­mon Pe­ter tell how he and his brother, An­drew, had be­come the first ac­cepted coun­selors of the new king­dom, and that they were to leave with their new Mas­ter on the mor­row for Gal­i­lee, both James and John were sad. They had known Je­sus for some time, and they loved him. They had searched for him many days in the hills, and now they re­turned to learn that oth­ers had been pre­ferred be­fore them. They in­quired where Je­sus had gone and made haste to find him.

137:1.6Je­sus was asleep when they reached his abode, but they awak­ened him, say­ing: “How is it that, while we who have so long lived with you are search­ing in the hills for you, you pre­fer oth­ers be­fore us and choose An­drew and Si­mon as your first as­so­ciates in the new king­dom?” Je­sus an­swered them, “Be calm in your hearts and ask your­selves, ‘who di­rected that you should search for the Son of Man when he was about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness?’” Af­ter they had re­cited the de­tails of their long search in the hills, Je­sus fur­ther in­structed them: “You should learn to search for the se­cret of the new king­dom in your hearts and not in the hills. That which you sought was al­ready pres­ent in your souls. You are in­deed my breth­ren—you needed not to be re­ceived by me—al­ready were you of the king­dom, and you should be of good cheer, mak­ing ready also to go with us to­mor­row into Gal­i­lee.” John then made bold to ask, “But, Mas­ter, will James and I be as­so­ciates with you in the new king­dom, even as An­drew and Si­mon?” And Je­sus, lay­ing a hand on the shoul­der of each of them, said: “My breth­ren, you were al­ready with me in the spirit of the king­dom, even be­fore these oth­ers made re­quest to be re­ceived. You, my breth­ren, have no need to make re­quest for en­trance into the king­dom; you have been with me in the king­dom from the be­gin­ning. Be­fore men, oth­ers may take prece­dence over you, but in my heart did I also num­ber you in the coun­cils of the king­dom, even be­fore you thought to make this re­quest of me. And even so might you have been first be­fore men had you not been ab­sent en­gaged in a well-in­ten­tioned but self-ap­pointed task of seek­ing for one who was not lost. In the com­ing king­dom, be not mind­ful of those things which fos­ter your anx­i­ety but rather at all times con­cern your­selves only with do­ing the will of the Fa­ther who is in heaven.”

137:1.7James and John re­ceived the re­buke in good grace; never more were they en­vi­ous of An­drew and Si­mon. And they made ready, with their two as­so­ciate apos­tles, to de­part for Gal­i­lee the next morn­ing. From this day on the term apos­tle was em­ployed to dis­tin­guish the cho­sen fam­ily of Je­sus’ ad­vis­ers from the vast mul­ti­tude of be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples who sub­se­quently fol­lowed him.

137:1.8Late that evening, James, John, An­drew, and Si­mon held con­verse with John the Bap­tist, and with tear­ful eye but steady voice the stal­wart Judean prophet sur­ren­dered two of his lead­ing dis­ci­ples to be­come the apos­tles of the Galilean Prince of the com­ing king­dom.

139:4.12Sev­eral years af­ter the mar­tyr­dom of James, John mar­ried his brother’s widow. The last twenty years of his life he was cared for by a lov­ing grand­daugh­ter.

139:1.1An­drew, chair­man of the apos­tolic corps of the king­dom, was born in Ca­per­naum. He was the old­est child in a fam­ily of five—him­self, his brother Si­mon, and three sis­ters. His fa­ther, now dead, had been a part­ner of Zeb­e­dee in the fish-dry­ing busi­ness at Beth­saida, the fish­ing har­bor of Ca­per­naum. When he be­came an apos­tle, An­drew was un­mar­ried but made his home with his mar­ried brother, Si­mon Pe­ter. Both were fish­er­men and part­ners of James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

141:3.2Pe­ter, James, and John did most of the pub­lic preach­ing. Philip, Na­than­iel, Thomas, and Si­mon did much of the per­sonal work and con­ducted classes for spe­cial groups of in­quir­ers; the twins con­tin­ued their gen­eral po­lice super­vi­sion, while An­drew, Mat­thew, and Ju­das de­vel­oped into a gen­eral man­age­rial com­mit­tee of three, al­though each of these three also did con­sid­er­able re­li­gious work.

148:1.1Pe­ter, James, and An­drew were the com­mit­tee des­ig­nated by Je­sus to pass upon ap­pli­cants for ad­mis­sion to the school of evan­ge­lists. All the races and na­tion­al­i­ties of the Ro­man world and the East, as far as In­dia, were rep­re­sented among the stu­dents in this new school of the proph­ets. This school was con­ducted on the plan of learn­ing and do­ing. What the stu­dents learned dur­ing the forenoon they taught to the as­sem­bly by the sea­side dur­ing the af­ter­noon. Af­ter sup­per they in­for­mally dis­cussed both the learn­ing of the forenoon and the teach­ing of the af­ter­noon.

148:1.2Each of the apos­tolic teach­ers taught his own view of the gospel of the king­dom. They made no ef­fort to teach just alike; there was no stan­dard­ized or dog­matic for­mu­la­tion of the­o­logic doc­trines. Though they all taught the same truth, each apos­tle pre­sented his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. And Je­sus up­held this pre­sen­ta­tion of the di­ver­sity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of the king­dom, un­fail­ingly har­mo­niz­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing these many and di­ver­gent views of the gospel at his weekly ques­tion hours. Not­with­stand­ing this great de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in mat­ters of teach­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter tended to dom­i­nate the the­ol­ogy of the school of evan­ge­lists. Next to Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee ex­erted the great­est per­sonal in­flu­ence.

149:0.2Be­fore the de­par­ture on this Sun­day morn­ing An­drew and Pe­ter asked Je­sus to give the fi­nal charge to the new evan­ge­lists, but the Mas­ter de­clined, say­ing that it was not his prov­ince to do those things which oth­ers could ac­cept­ably per­form. Af­ter due de­lib­er­a­tion it was de­cided that James Zeb­e­dee should ad­min­is­ter the charge. At the con­clu­sion of James’s re­marks Je­sus said to the evan­ge­lists: “Go now forth to do the work as you have been charged, and later on, when you have shown your­selves com­pe­tent and faith­ful, I will or­dain you to preach the gospel of the king­dom.”

140:8.1Je­sus well knew that his apos­tles were not fully as­sim­i­lat­ing his teach­ings. He de­cided to give some spe­cial in­struc­tion to Pe­ter, James, and John, hop­ing they would be able to clar­ify the ideas of their as­so­ciates. He saw that, while some fea­tures of the idea of a spir­i­tual king­dom were be­ing grasped by the twelve, they stead­fastly per­sisted in at­tach­ing these new spir­i­tual teach­ings di­rectly onto their old and en­trenched lit­eral con­cepts of the king­dom of heaven as a restora­tion of David’s throne and the re-es­tab­lish­ment of Is­rael as a tem­po­ral power on earth. Ac­cord­ingly, on Thurs­day af­ter­noon Je­sus went out from the shore in a boat with Pe­ter, James, and John to talk over the af­fairs of the king­dom. This was a four hours’ teach­ing con­fer­ence, em­brac­ing scores of ques­tions and an­swers, and may most prof­itably be put in this rec­ord by re­or­ga­niz­ing the sum­mary of this mo­men­tous af­ter­noon as it was given by Si­mon Pe­ter to his brother, An­drew, the fol­low­ing morn­ing:

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”

154:2.4This was the week that Na­than­iel and James Zeb­e­dee suf­fered from more than a slight ill­ness. For three days and nights they were acutely af­flicted with a painful di­ges­tive dis­tur­bance. On the third night Je­sus sent Sa­lome, James’s mother, to her rest, while he min­is­tered to his suf­fer­ing apos­tles. Of course Je­sus could have in­stantly healed these two men, but that is not the method of ei­ther the Son or the Fa­ther in deal­ing with these com­mon­place dif­fi­cul­ties and af­flic­tions of the chil­dren of men on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. Never once, through­out all of his event­ful life in the flesh, did Je­sus en­gage in any sort of super­nat­u­ral min­is­tra­tion to any mem­ber of his earth fam­ily or in be­half of any one of his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers.

138:10.32. Pe­ter, James, and John were ap­pointed per­sonal com­pan­ions of Je­sus. They were to at­tend him day and night, to min­is­ter to his phys­i­cal and sundry needs, and to ac­com­pany him on those night vig­ils of prayer and mys­te­ri­ous com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther in heaven.

139:4.3Pe­ter, James, and John were as­signed as per­sonal aides to Je­sus soon af­ter they be­came apos­tles. Shortly af­ter the se­lec­tion of the twelve and at the time Je­sus ap­pointed An­drew to act as di­rec­tor of the group, he said to him: “And now I de­sire that you as­sign two or three of your as­so­ciates to be with me and to re­main by my side, to com­fort me and to min­is­ter to my daily needs.” And An­drew thought best to se­lect for this spe­cial duty the next three first-cho­sen apos­tles. He would have liked to vol­un­teer for such a blessed ser­vice him­self, but the Mas­ter had al­ready given him his com­mis­sion; so he im­me­di­ately di­rected that Pe­ter, James, and John at­tach them­selves to Je­sus.

77:8.12Many of the more lit­eral phe­nom­ena as­cribed to an­gels have been per­formed by the sec­ondary mid­way crea­tures. When the early teach­ers of the gospel of Je­sus were thrown into prison by the ig­no­rant re­li­gious lead­ers of that day, an ac­tual “an­gel of the Lord” “by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth.” But in the case of Pe­ter’s de­liv­er­ance af­ter the killing of James by Herod’s or­der, it was a sec­ondary mid­wayer who per­formed the work as­cribed to an an­gel.

141:5.1One of the most event­ful of all the evening con­fer­ences at Am­athus was the ses­sion hav­ing to do with the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual unity. James Zeb­e­dee had asked, “Mas­ter, how shall we learn to see alike and thereby en­joy more har­mony among our­selves?” When Je­sus heard this ques­tion, he was stirred within his spirit, so much so that he replied: “James, James, when did I teach you that you should all see alike? I have come into the world to pro­claim spir­i­tual lib­erty to the end that mor­tals may be em­pow­ered to live in­di­vid­ual lives of orig­i­nal­ity and free­dom be­fore God. I do not de­sire that so­cial har­mony and fra­ter­nal peace shall be pur­chased by the sac­ri­fice of free per­son­al­ity and spir­i­tual orig­i­nal­ity. What I re­quire of you, my apos­tles, is spirit unity—and that you can ex­pe­ri­ence in the joy of your united ded­i­ca­tion to the whole­hearted do­ing of the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in or­der spir­i­tu­ally to be alike. Spir­i­tual unity is de­rived from the con­scious­ness that each of you is in­dwelt, and in­creas­ingly dom­i­nated, by the spirit gift of the heav­enly Fa­ther. Your apos­tolic har­mony must grow out of the fact that the spirit hope of each of you is iden­ti­cal in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny.

144:3.1But the apos­tles were not yet sat­is­fied; they de­sired Je­sus to give them a model prayer which they could teach the new dis­ci­ples. Af­ter lis­ten­ing to this dis­course on prayer, James Zeb­e­dee said: “Very good, Mas­ter, but we do not de­sire a form of prayer for our­selves so much as for the newer be­liev­ers who so fre­quently be­seech us, ‘Teach us how ac­cept­ably to pray to the Fa­ther in heaven.’”

159:5.1At Phil­a­del­phia, where James was work­ing, Je­sus taught the dis­ci­ples about the pos­i­tive na­ture of the gospel of the king­dom. When, in the course of his re­marks, he in­ti­mated that some parts of the Scrip­ture were more truth-con­tain­ing than oth­ers and ad­mon­ished his hear­ers to feed their souls upon the best of the spir­i­tual food, James in­ter­rupted the Mas­ter, ask­ing: “Would you be good enough, Mas­ter, to sug­gest to us how we may choose the bet­ter pas­sages from the Scrip­tures for our per­sonal ed­i­fi­ca­tion?” And Je­sus replied: “Yes, James, when you read the Scrip­tures look for those eter­nally true and di­vinely beau­ti­ful teach­ings, such as:

183:4.2An­drew had been re­leased from all re­spon­si­bil­ity in the group man­age­ment of his fel­low apos­tles; ac­cord­ingly, in this great­est of all crises in their lives, he was silent. Af­ter a short in­for­mal dis­cus­sion, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stood up on the stone wall of the olive press and, mak­ing an im­pas­sioned plea for loy­alty to the Mas­ter and the cause of the king­dom, ex­horted his fel­low apos­tles and the other dis­ci­ples to has­ten on af­ter the mob and ef­fect the res­cue of Je­sus. The ma­jor­ity of the com­pany would have been dis­posed to fol­low his ag­gres­sive lead­er­ship had it not been for the ad­vice of Na­than­iel, who stood up the mo­ment Si­mon had fin­ished speak­ing and called their at­ten­tion to Je­sus’ oft-re­peated teach­ings re­gard­ing non­re­sis­tance. He fur­ther re­minded them that Je­sus had that very night in­structed them that they should pre­serve their lives for the time when they should go forth into the world pro­claim­ing the good news of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. And Na­than­iel was en­cour­aged in this stand by James Zeb­e­dee, who now told how Pe­ter and oth­ers drew their swords to de­fend the Mas­ter against ar­rest, and that Je­sus bade Si­mon Pe­ter and his fel­low swords­men sheathe their blades. Mat­thew and Philip also made speeches, but noth­ing def­i­nite came of this dis­cus­sion un­til Thomas, call­ing their at­ten­tion to the fact that Je­sus had coun­seled Laz­a­rus against ex­pos­ing him­self to death, pointed out that they could do noth­ing to save their Mas­ter inas­much as he re­fused to al­low his friends to de­fend him, and since he per­sisted in re­frain­ing from the use of his di­vine pow­ers to frus­trate his hu­man en­e­mies. Thomas per­suaded them to scat­ter, ev­ery man for him­self, with the un­der­stand­ing that David Zeb­e­dee would re­main at the camp to main­tain a clear­ing­house and mes­sen­ger head­quar­ters for the group. By half past two o’clock that morn­ing the camp was de­serted; only David re­mained on hand with three or four mes­sen­gers, the oth­ers hav­ing been dis­patched to se­cure in­for­ma­tion as to where Je­sus had been taken, and what was go­ing to be done with him.

171:0.4It was on this Sun­day af­ter­noon that Sa­lome the mother of James and John Zeb­e­dee came to Je­sus with her two apos­tle sons and, in the man­ner of ap­proach­ing an Ori­en­tal po­ten­tate, sought to have Je­sus prom­ise in ad­vance to grant what­ever re­quest she might make. But the Mas­ter would not prom­ise; in­stead, he asked her, “What do you want me to do for you?” Then an­swered Sa­lome: “Mas­ter, now that you are go­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem to es­tab­lish the king­dom, I would ask you in ad­vance to prom­ise me that these my sons shall have honor with you, the one to sit on your right hand and the other to sit on your left hand in your king­dom.”

171:0.5When Je­sus heard Sa­lome’s re­quest, he said: “Woman, you know not what you ask.” And then, look­ing straight into the eyes of the two honor-seek­ing apos­tles, he said: “Be­cause I have long known and loved you; be­cause I have even lived in your mother’s house; be­cause An­drew has as­signed you to be with me at all times; there­fore do you per­mit your mother to come to me se­cretly, mak­ing this un­seemly re­quest. But let me ask you: Are you able to drink the cup I am about to drink?” And with­out a mo­ment for thought, James and John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we are able.” Said Je­sus: “I am sad­dened that you know not why we go up to Je­ru­sa­lem; I am grieved that you un­der­stand not the na­ture of my king­dom; I am dis­ap­pointed that you bring your mother to make this re­quest of me; but I know you love me in your hearts; there­fore I de­clare that you shall in­deed drink of my cup of bit­ter­ness and share in my hu­mil­i­a­tion, but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give. Such hon­ors are re­served for those who have been des­ig­nated by my Fa­ther.”

171:0.6By this time some­one had car­ried word of this con­fer­ence to Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, and they were highly in­dig­nant that James and John would seek to be pre­ferred be­fore them, and that they would se­cretly go with their mother to make such a re­quest. When they fell to ar­gu­ing among them­selves, Je­sus called them all to­gether and said: “You well un­der­stand how the rulers of the gen­tiles lord it over their sub­jects, and how those who are great ex­er­cise au­thor­ity. But it shall not be so in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever would be great among you, let him first be­come your ser­vant. He who would be first in the king­dom, let him be­come your min­is­ter. I de­clare to you that the Son of Man came not to be min­is­tered to but to min­is­ter; and I now go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to lay down my life in the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will and in the ser­vice of my breth­ren.” When the apos­tles heard these words, they with­drew by them­selves to pray. That evening, in re­sponse to the labors of Pe­ter, James and John made suit­able apolo­gies to the ten and were re­stored to the good graces of their breth­ren.

171:0.7In ask­ing for places on the right hand and on the left hand of Je­sus at Je­ru­sa­lem, the sons of Zeb­e­dee lit­tle re­al­ized that in less than one month their beloved teacher would be hang­ing on a Ro­man cross with a dy­ing thief on one side and an­other trans­gres­sor on the other side. And their mother, who was pres­ent at the cru­ci­fix­ion, well re­mem­bered the fool­ish re­quest she had made of Je­sus at Pella re­gard­ing the hon­ors she so un­wisely sought for her apos­tle sons.

136:3.7Through­out all of these forty days of iso­la­tion James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee were en­gaged in search­ing for Je­sus. Many times they were not far from his abid­ing place, but never did they find him.

138:2.63. James Al­pheus, a fish­er­man and farmer of Kheresa, was se­lected by James Zeb­e­dee.

129:1.11Once a week Je­sus held a meet­ing with the en­tire house­hold, shop, and shore helpers, for Zeb­e­dee had many em­ploy­ees. And it was among these work­ers that Je­sus was first called “the Mas­ter.” They all loved him. He en­joyed his labors with Zeb­e­dee in Ca­per­naum, but he missed the chil­dren play­ing out by the side of the Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter shop.